中国人民大学2003年考博英语真题及答案详解

　　Passage 4

　　At the fall 2001 Social Science History Association convention in Chicago, the Crime and Justice network sponsored a forum on the history of gun ownership, gun use, and gun violence in the United States. Our purpose was to consider how social science history might contribute to the public debate over gun control and gun rights. To date, we have had little impact on that debate. It has been dominated by mainstream social scientists and historians, especially scholars such as Gary Kleck, John Lott, and Michael Bellesiles, whose work, despite profound flaws, is politically congenial to either opponents or proponents of gun control. Kleck and Mark Gertz, for instance, argue on the basis of their widely cited survey that gun owners prevent numerous crimes each year in the United States by using firearms to defend themselves and their property. If their survey respondents are to be believed, American gun owners shot 100, 000 criminals in 1994 in self-defense—a preposterous number. Lott claims on the basis of his statistical analysis of recent crime rates that laws allowing private individuals to carry concealed firearms deter murders, rapes, and robberies, because criminals are afraid to attack potentially armed victims. However, he biases his results by confining his analysis to the year between 1977 and 1992, when violent crime rates had peaked and varied little from year to year. He reports only regression models that support his thesis and neglects to mention that each of those models find a positive relationship between violent crime and real income, and an inverse relationship between violent crime and unemployment.

　　Contrary to Kleck and Lott, Bellesiles insists that guns and America's “gun culture” are responsible for America's high rates of murder. In Belleville's opinion, relatively few Americans owned guns before the 1850s or know how to use, maintain, or repair them. As a result, he says, guns contributed little to the homicide rate, especially among white, which was low everywhere, even in the South and on the frontier, where historians once assume guns and murder went hand in hand. According to Bellesiles, these patterns changed dramatically after the Mexican War and especially after the Civil War, when gun ownership became widespread and cultural changes encouraged the use of handguns to command respect and resolve personal and political disputes. The result was an unprecedented wave of gun-related homicides that never truly abated. To this day, the United States has the highest homicide rate of any industrial democracy. Belleville's low estimates of gun ownership in early America conflict, however, with those of every historian who has previously studied the subject and have thus far proven irreproducible. Every homicide statistic he presents is either misleading or wrong.

　　Given the influence of Kleck, Lott, Bellesiles and other partisan scholars on the debate over gun control and gun rights, we felt a need to pull together what social science historians have learned to date about the history of gun ownership and gun violence in America, and to consider what research methods and projects might increase our knowledge in the near future.

　　56. Which of following statements is true about the public debate over gun network?

　　A. It has little influence on the forum sponsored by the Crime and Justice network.

　　B. Neither supporters nor opponents of gun control cite the works of scholars.

　　C. The works of mainstream social scientists have great impact on it.

　　D. Many social science historians have so far failed to take part in it.

　　57. The author mentions Kleck, Lott, and Bellesiles mainly to__________.

　　A. illustrate the influence they have on the issue of gun control

　　B. refute the claim that private ownership of firearms will deter violent crimes

　　C. support the thesis that gun ownership leads to more violence

　　D. demonstrate why research methods should be improved in the study of the gun ownership history

　　58. The author's main criticism of John Lott is that he__________.

　　A. advocates private ownership of firearms

　　B. is not objective in his analysis

　　C. has analyzed a wrong period

　　D. has cited dubious statistics

　　59. With which of the following will Bellesiles most probably agree?

　　A. Gun control should be tightened.

　　B. Guns have little to do with murder.

　　C. “Gun culture” was the result of high homicide rates in America.

　　D. The statistics that earlier historians produced of gun ownership is reliable.

　　60. The passage is primarily concerned with__________.

　　A. resolving a public dispute over gun control

　　B. describing the effects of earlier studies on gun control

　　C. analyzing the flaws in the previous theories about gun control

　　D. summarizing the recent development in the studies of gun control

　　Ⅴ Translation (20 points)

　　Part A (10 points)

　　Direction: Translate the following English passage into Chinese on your ANSWER SHEET.

　　The Renaissance embraced, first of all, an impressive record of new achievements in art, literature, science, philosophy, education and religion. Although the foundation of many of these was classical, they soon expanded beyond the measure of Greek and Roman influence. Indeed, many of the achievements in painting, science, politics and religion bore little relation to the classical heritage. Secondly, the Renaissance incorporated a number of dominant ideas and attitudes that gave it the impress of a unique society. Notable among these in general were optimism, and individualism; but the most significant of them all was humanism. In its broadest meaning humanism may be defined as emphasis on the human values. It was a term derived from Cicero, who used it in the sense of devotion to the liberal arts, or the subjects most compatible with the dignity of man. The humanists rejected the Scholastic philosophy with its preoccupation with theology and logic. They strove for a smooth and elegant style that would appeal more to the aesthetic than to the rational side of man's nature.

　　Part B (10 points)

　　Direction: Translate the following Chinese paragraph into English on your ANSWER SHEET.

　　由小学到中学，所修习的无非是一些普通的基本知识。就是大学四年，所授课业也还是相当粗浅的学识。大学的研究所才是初步研究学问的所在，在这里做学问也只能算是粗涉藩篱，注重的是研究学问的方法与实习。学无止境，一生的时间都嫌太短，所以古人皓首穷经，头发白了还是在继续研究，不过在这样的研究中确是有深厚的兴趣。

　　Ⅵ Writing (20 points)

　　Write an essay in no less than 250 words with the title “Social Sciences and the Humanities should Play a More Important Role in the 21st Century”.

考博必备！历年真题及答案

考博精品好课，就选新东方！